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  For Doctor Robert Bray, Major, United States Air Force, for reasons that remain classified,

  and

  for the sentinels out there tonight, holding the line for us all.

  Buried within the 9,723-word text of Executive Order 12333, United States Intelligence Activities, is this sentence in Part 2, Paragraph 13:

  2.11 Prohibition on Assassination. No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in or conspire to engage in assassination.

  Seven days after 9/11, Congress passed a 275-word resolution titled the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. This document granted the president of the United States the authority to bring individuals and countries involved in the attack to justice. Twenty years later, it remains the sole legal basis for the continuing War on Terror.

  …to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it…

  —AL-QAEDA FATWĀ, 1998

  Im ba l’hargekha, hashkem l’hargo

  If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.

  —TALMUDIC EDICT

  PREFACE

  ON THE MORNING OF September 11, 2001, nineteen men boarded four planes at Logan, Newark, and Dulles International Airports. All aircraft were bound for the West Coast. The flights were selected because they had the requisite fuel required for transcontinental flights.

  Two hours later, the United States would be at war, a war that continues today.

  This narrative is not about the events of that September morning. Rather, it is a reflection on the knowledge our adversaries acquired from our response to terrorism in the Middle East and Europe from 1979 through the first half of 2001 and what they have gleaned in the two decades following the seminal attack that changed the course of history.

  This is a novel of asymmetric warfare.

  I have long wondered what the enemy has learned watching us on the field of battle for what is now twenty years of sustained combat. What lessons have they learned and how have they altered their tactics and strategies to incorporate those lessons? If I were the enemy, what would I have learned?

  These are questions I pondered while in uniform and continue to contemplate as an author. Our adversaries have observed us at the poker table for twenty years while having the benefit of seeing our cards. They have studied our tactics and seen our technologies evolve; they’ve observed our shifting goals and objectives. They have taken notes as we fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other flashpoints around the globe. Our response to a pandemic and the civil unrest plaguing our cities at a time when domestic political ideologies seem irreconcilable has not gone unnoticed. They see a country divided. Have they accounted for that division in their battle plans?

  It has been almost twenty years since that September morning. Our enemy has been patient. They have been watching, learning, and adapting. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, terrorist groups, and super-empowered individuals have been waiting, identifying gaps in our defenses and refining plots that exploit our weaknesses. It is my sincere hope that the operation you read about in the following pages is not currently being planned by a foreign intelligence service. We would be wise to remember that the Athenian historian Thucydides in the Melian Dialogue of his History of the Peloponnesian War characterizes hope as danger’s comforter. In modern military and intelligence parlance, the ancient Greek general’s text translates as hope is not a course of action. While this is true, hope is oftentimes all one has in times of despair. The lesson is one as old as time: Be prepared.

  There is arguably no military text as influential as The Art of War. The Chinese military strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu knew that “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” In an asymmetric confrontation, this is of extreme importance for the foe that does not possess a nuclear arsenal. How then would they defeat a superpower? “All warfare is based on deception.” The teachings of the Warring States–period general are not foreign concepts to our adversaries—adversaries who play the long game. With those two idioms in mind, if your mission was to destroy a modern empire, what would you do?

  This is also a book on the ethics, morality, and legality of targeted assassinations, what the Israelis call Chissulim, or eliminations, as an instrument of state power. Is there a difference between using a Reaper UAV to take out an enemy combatant with an AGM-114 Hellfire or GBU-38 JDAM from fifty thousand feet and sending a 180-grain .300 Winchester Magnum through that same terrorist’s brain stem from a thousand yards out? How does the enemy view those different methods of killing? Has the increasing reliance on UAVs to deliver death remotely had the intended effect? Has it saved American lives, or has it recruited more of what Dr. David Kilcullen calls “accidental guerrillas” to the cause?

  On September 11, 2001, there were certain groups who stood shoulder to shoulder watching the twin towers fall on television, men with certain skills, men whose only mission in life was to be prepared for war. It is not openly discussed, but within this fraternity there were those who had but one thought: God, I wish I was on one of those planes. They are called to the fight: protectors, warriors, guardians. They are out there tonight. They are hunting. If the war returns to the home front, you want one of these sentinels standing by your side, armed and ready.

  Prior to 9/11 these men would have chosen airline seats by the windows. Based on the data from previous hijackings, they knew this allowed them to be harder to physically strike in an initial violent takeover of the plane’s cabin when terrorists needed to make examples of certain passengers to keep the others in line. Window seats bought them time to observe and plan a course of action. 9/11 shifted the hijacking paradigm. Following that Tuesday morning, those same guardians began selecting seats in the aisle so they could react to a threat instantly. They appear no different than anyone else, unless you know what to look for, unless you are one of them.

  Researching this novel was an intensely emotional experience: listening to the calls from those on the hijacked aircraft to their loved ones on the ground, reading about those who perished, trapped in collapsing buildings, some electing to jump to their deaths rather than be burned alive.

  I encourage everyone to visit the 9/11 memorial in lower Manhattan. Take your time. Heed its lessons.

  As we move past the twentieth anniversary of the attacks and into our third decade of continuous warfare, do we have a clear vision of how this conflict ends? Or has our short-war strategy applied to a long-term conflict condemned our children and grandchildren to fight the sons and grandsons of the men who planned the deadliest terrorist attack in history? Do we still not understand the nature of the conflict in which we are engaged?

  I fear we may all know the answer.

  Jack Carr

  Park City, Utah

  September 11, 2020

  CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

  1953: CIA-Sponsored Iranian Coup d’état

  1979: Iranian Revolution

  1979: Iran Hostage Crisis Begins

  1980: Operation Eagle Claw

  1980: Iran–Iraq War Begins

  1981: Iran Hostage Crisis Ends

  1983: United States Embassy Bombing, Beirut, Lebanon
/>   1983: U.S. Marine Barracks Bombing, Beirut, Lebanon

  1983: United States Embassy Bombing, Kuwait City, Kuwait

  1984: CIA Beirut Station Chief William F. Buckley Kidnapping

  1984: United States Embassy Annex Bombing, Beirut, Lebanon

  1985: TWA Flight 847 Hijacking

  1985: Iran-Contra Affair Begins

  1985: Achille Lauro Hijacking

  1985: CIA Beirut Station Chief William Buckley Executed

  1987: Iran-Contra Affair Ends

  1987: Operation Earnest Will Begins

  1988: Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins Kidnapping, Lebanon

  1988: USS Vincennes Shoots Down Iran Air Flight 655

  1988: Iran–Iraq War Ends

  1988: Operation Earnest Will Ends

  1988: Pan Am Flight 103 Bombing

  1990: Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins Executed, Lebanon

  1990: Iraq Invasion of Kuwait

  1990: Operation Desert Shield

  1991: Operation Desert Storm

  1993: World Trade Center Bombing

  1996: Khobar Towers Bombing

  1998: United States East Africa Embassy Bombings

  2000: USS Cole Bombing

  2001: Ahmad Shah Massoud Assassinated

  2001: September 11 Terrorist Attacks

  2001: United States Invasion of Afghanistan

  2003: United States Invasion of Iraq

  2006: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Killed

  2008: Imad Mughniyeh Killed

  2011: Osama bin Laden Killed

  2020: Qasem Soleimani Killed

  2021: Twentieth Anniversary of the September 11 Terrorist Attacks

  What’s past is prologue.

  —William Shakespeare

  PROLOGUE

  FOR THOSE NOT INVOLVED in the operation, the day that changed the world started no differently than any other. For a select few, there had been a slight variation to their routines. Aliyah Hajjar was one of those few.

  For the past year, Aliyah had been employed by JetClean Industries, a commercial janitorial service specializing in aviation, cleaning planes between flights at Boston’s Logan International Airport. She spent her days working her way up and down the aisles with the rest of her cleaning crew, picking trash out of seat back pockets, restocking the lavatories with toilet paper, disinfecting the galleys, and arranging the seat belts.

  Aliyah did not mind the work. It gave her time away from her home where she could talk with the other Muslim women assigned to her rotation. It was also time away from her husband.

  He had never struck her when they lived in Hamburg. The beatings had started once they moved to the United States after receiving their five-year business visas from the embassy in Berlin. At first, Aliyah thought it was because she had failed to bear him children. Now she knew differently.

  She had not understood why the man who had studied to be an accountant in Germany was busing tables and cleaning the kitchen at a Moroccan restaurant outside Cambridge. Their meager take-home pay barely managed to cover the rent and put food on the table of their small Watertown apartment. The first time she pressed him on the subject, he slapped her across the face. Even now the memory of the sting, compounded by shock, caused her eyes to water. When she attempted to turn and run, he grabbed her by the throat and threw her onto their secondhand couch that reeked of mildew, squeezing the life from her as he screamed that she was not to question him again.

  Later that night, there had been a knock at the door. Her husband had pointed to the bedroom and told her to stay there until he came to get her. Pressing her ear to the doorjamb, she strained to hear the short, hushed conversation. She recognized her native tongue but could not make out the words. She then put herself to bed and pretended to sleep. The next day, after work, she searched the small apartment and found an unfamiliar suitcase in the broom closet by the entrance. It was filled with cash. She tried to put it back exactly as she had found it.

  That night he beat her again. This time, it took a few days for the swelling to go down. When she did return to Logan International, the hijab hid the marks, her bloodshot eyes all that were visible between the black slits.

  From then on, she never touched an unfamiliar suitcase, backpack, or bag found in the apartment. She knew it was hawala, the ancient system of money transfer originating along the Silk Road. It allowed for the movement of funds around the world without the digital trail left by banks and wire transfers. Hawalaladars usually took a percentage of the transfer for their trouble, yet Aliyah noticed no perceivable change in their finances. As a Muslim woman with a strict Islamic upbringing, she was barred from knowing the specifics of their financial situation. She just knew the couch was moldy and her husband took no steps to replace it.

  Two weeks ago, she’d returned home from work a little earlier than normal. She had not been feeling well for a few days. As she fished the keys from her purse, she fumbled and dropped them in the stairwell. Had the man coming down stopped to pick them up, smiled, and wished her a good day, she would have thought nothing of it. Instead he passed by without acknowledgment, his foot stepping within an inch of the keys. He was slightly older than she was, though not by much, and was unremarkable, except for one notable feature: It was his eyes that haunted her. Empty. Even though it was the height of the summer heat, she felt a chill. Perhaps she really was coming down with something.

  No, she thought. I’ve seen him somewhere before. Hamburg? Cairo? Somewhere.

  As she pushed the cleaning cart onto the plane docked at gate B32, she wondered if the man with the empty eyes was involved with this evening’s mission.

  Her husband had called in sick to the restaurant, which Aliyah thought was odd because he was clearly not ill. Yet she accepted it as she did so many other things in her life; the violence had taught her it was best to not ask questions. Then he told her; Allah had chosen her for an important task. Now she understood. She understood why they had applied for business visas in Germany, why her husband had taken this menial job in the United States, why they prayed only at home and did not frequent the mosque, and why she had been forced to apply for the minimum-wage job cleaning airplanes.

  The Boeing 767 was scheduled for a morning long-haul flight to Los Angeles. It needed to be cleaned the night before so it would be ready to go the following day.

  She adjusted her hijab and knelt, using the blade from her box cutter to scrape gum from the deck. Disgusting. She and the other janitors on her crew had been taught to use the short steel edge to remove bubble gum from the underside of seats and from the floor of the aircraft they were entrusted to clean. It was standard industry practice.

  What wasn’t standard industry practice was what she did next.

  She had intentionally maneuvered into a position in first class where she could track the positions of her colleagues. Two were picking their way through the seat backs of the main cabin, filling garbage bags with refuse from the last flight of the day. One was sanitizing the aft lavatory. A supervisor was perched mid-cabin overseeing their work while marking “complete” boxes on a checklist.

  Pretending to notice something across the aisle, she moved to the second row and knelt. When she stood back up, box cutters were taped to the underside of seats 2A and 2B.

  * * *

  As their chauffeured Town Car slowly worked though the morning New York City traffic, Alec Christensen heard the familiar Nokia tone chiming from the new phone in his messenger bag. He fished it out by the third stanza. Tilting the device toward his fiancée in the seat next to him, he smiled, showing off the new caller ID feature.

  “You are on that thing too much,” she scolded. “It’s going to give you a tumor.”

  “Hey, Dad,” Alec said, after hitting the large talk button with his thumb and bringing it to his ear. “Just about there. Oh, really? That’s too bad. Okay. Then I’ll meet you at the Rainbow Room. Yep. Eight thirty. I’ll let her know. See you then.”

  “What’d he say?”
Jen asked.

  “He had to move our breakfast to Midtown. A meeting at the office came up, so he can’t make it down. He said to send his deepest regrets,” Alec said, switching to the mid-Atlantic accent so heavy in his father’s voice.

  “You sound like Julia Child.”

  “Oh, come on, that was at least a good William F. Buckley. Want to try and swing breakfast with us?”

  Jen looked at her watch.

  “Well, my boss is coming in late today. He’s dropping his son off for the first day of kindergarten. Even so, I’d better not. I don’t think I’d make it back in time. Are you going to tell him without me?” Jen said, switching topics.

  “What do you think?” Alec asked as his thumbs went to work on the small keypad.

  “Why don’t you just call? This new texting thing is just too weird. I don’t see it catching on. And besides, you’re missing this beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky.”

  “These tech guys like it, and it’s actually pretty efficient once you get the hang of it. See, you just have to scroll though these letters until you find the one you want. Just letting the team know I’m on schedule to meet them at eleven at the property on Eighth.”

  “Think your company is going to buy the building?”

  “Probably just lease part of it for now, but you never know. This bubble is going to burst, Jen. It’s not going to be pretty, but the companies that survive are going to emerge stronger and gain a huge amount of market share.”

  “I love it when you talk dirty to me,” Jen said, sliding across the backseat of the Lincoln, closer to the man she planned to share her life with.

  It would have been faster to take the subway into lower Manhattan, but when Alec was in town his father always provided a car service. Jen suspected it came from protecting his only child. It broke her heart that Alec had no memories of his mother who passed away before he could even crawl.